Pair vessel hast thou seen with honey filled, Which is no sooner opened, than descend
Upon the clammy sweets by bees distilled
A troop of flies, quick swarming without end?
Yet these when one doth fan away and beat, Such as had lighted with a fearful care
On the jar's edge, nor cumbered wings and feet, Lightly they mount into the upper air.
But all that headlong plunged those sweets among, They cannot fly, in cloying sweetness bound;
The heavy toils have all around them clung, In woful surfeiting their lives are drowned.
Such vessel is this world — fanned evermore By death's dark Angel with his mighty wing;
Then all that had in pleasure's honied store Their spirits sunk, they upward cannot spring. 1 J. Brierley, The Secret of Living, 35.
224 SPIRITUAL DETACHMENT
Only they mount, who on this vessel's side With heed alighting, had with extreme lip
Just ventured, there while suffered to abide, Its sweets in measure and with fear to sip.1
H In a palace, at Florence, there are two pictures which hang side by side. One represents a stormy sea with its wild waves, and black clouds and fierce lightnings flashing across the sky. In the waters a human face is seen, wearing an expression of the utmost agony and despair. The other picture also represents the sea tossed by as fierce a storm, with as dark clouds ; but out of tbe midst of the waves a rock rises, against which the waters dash in vain. In a cleft of the rock are some tufts of grass and green herbage, with sweet flowers, and amid these a dove is seen sitting on her nest quiet and undisturbed by the wild fury of the storm. The first picture represents the sorrow of the world helpless and despairing ; the second the sorrow of the Christian nestling in the bosom of God's unchanging love. When striving to bear on and bear up we may remember a fine passage of Jeremy Taylor's: "Well, let the world have its course, I am content to bear it ; God's will be done ; let the sea be troubled ; let the waves thereof roar ; let the winds of affliction blow ; let the waves of sorrow rush upon me ; let the darkness of grief and heaviness compass me about; yet will I not be afraid. These storms will blow over ; these winds will be laid ; these waves will fall ; this tempest cannot last long ; and these clouds shall be dispelled ; whatsoever I suffer here shall shortly have an end. I shall not suffer eternally ; come the worst that can come death will put an end to all my sorrow and miseries. Lord grant me patience here and ease hereafter ! I will suffer patiently whatever can happen, and shall endeavour to do nothing against my conscience and displeasing unto Thee ; for all is safe and sure with him who is certain and sure of a blessed Eternity." 2
3. Business. — " Those that buy, as though they possessed not." St. Paul recognizes, as every man must, the important place which business holds in life. Business or trade belongs just as much to life as the home and family do, or as the State does. It is part of the order of things, and may have just as great a religious value as the home has. Do not think of St. Paul as speaking slightingly of business, or as having any such idea in his mind. He has not. Nor does he mean that men are to be half in earnest in their work. "Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily."
1 Trench, Poems, 328. a J. H. Goodman, Tht Lordship of Christ, 6.
i CORINTHIANS vn. 29-31 225
What he means is that business is not an end in itself. It is ordained in the providence of God to serve for things greater than itself. Buy, but do not let business be your life. As we are not to lose ourselves in joy or sorrow, so we are not to lose ourselves in business.
Tf When outward business diverted him a little from the thought of God, a fresh remembrance coming from God invested his soul, and so inflamed and transported him, that it was difficult for him to restrain himself.
That he was more united to God in his ordinary occupations than when he left them for devotion in retirement, from which he knew himself to issue with much dryness of spirit.
That the most excellent method which he had found of going to God, was that of doing our common business, without any view of pleasing men, and (as far as we are capable) purely for the love of God.
That it was a great delusion to think that the times of prayer ought to differ from other times ; that we were as strictly obliged to adhere to God by action in the time of action as by prayer in its season.1
III.
A General Direction. " Use the world, as not abusing it."
1. These English words — " use " and " abuse " — stand to each other in much the same relation as the corresponding words of the Apostle. To "use" anything is to turn it to account in the direction of those ends for which it is really needed. To " abuse " is simply to turn a thing away from its true and proper use. Often, in doing this, you spoil the thing itself ; so that the idea of injury comes to be generally involved in that of abuse. But, originally and literally, to " abuse " is just to employ any- thing in a manner that is aside from those purposes for which it is needed and designed.